Web application security - the fast guide 1.1 | Page 41

Chapter 2 - Web Application technologies P a g e | 41 Web services are web application components that allow receiving a request and responding through XML based messages. There are now two main schools to develop web services the first is the traditional based on SOAP Protocol and the new simpler called REST web service. SOAP is “Simple Object Access Protocol” and it is used to encapsulate message between sender and receiver. Example of SOAP Syntax: ... ... ... Traditional services also depend on a XML based document created with a language called WSDL (web service description language) it specifies the location of the service and the operations (or methods) the service exposes. The new REST approach is simpler it tries to omit the heavy weight standard depending on Plain Old XML (POX) Where (REST) is Representational state transfer a style of architecture in which requests and responses contain state information. As example the following URL with parameters: http://skcomputerco.com/proejcts.php?category=design&size=big Is written in the REST style as http://skcomputerco.com/proejcts/design/big the result as mentioned will be returned in XML format. GET /projects/design/big HTTP/1.1 Host: skcomputerco.com Accept: text/xml Accept-Charset: utf-8